Valerie Gates has an ingenious way to mark the rows in her raised beds. All you need is some acrylic paint, a couple coats of polyurethane, and some good-sized rocks. Her daughter-in-law, Katie Gates, came up with the idea when she found a long, skinny rock and painted it into a carrot.

Gardeners experiment with lots of ways to label their crops. Painted rocks are fun and durable. (Kristen Browning-Blas, The Denver Post)

They had fun picking out the shapes for the pea pod, tomato and cucumber rocks, which Valerie can move around as she rotates her crops. To keep the painted rocks bright, she moves them indoors for the winter.

Valerie grows vegetables in her stone-bordered raised beds, which happen to be on the site of the original Fort Collins Country Club golf course. “In our back yard, I learned there was one of the sand traps and I thought ‘that explains why I couldn’t get anything to grow over there,'” says Valerie.

The Fort Collins Junior League’s 31st annual garden tour June 22, 2013, took visitors through the mature neighborhood north of Country Club Road, between Long Pond and Terry Lake, just west of the Fort Collins Country Club. The tour is the league’s largest fundraiser, and supports programs for women and children in Northern Colorado.

Becky Hensley is the co-founder of Share Denver - a community craft space in Park Hill. She's also the proud Ninja-in Chief of the Denver Craft Ninjas -- a women’s crafting collective dedicated to keeping the DIY spirit alive through laughter, shared skills, and cocktails.

Colorado native Mark Montano is an international designer, artist, author and television personality. He has appeared on TLC’s “While You Were Out” and “10 Years Younger,” as well as “My Celebrity Home” on the Style Network, “She’s Moving In” on We TV, “The Tony Danza Show” on ABC, and “My Home 2.0” on Fox.